


Tamanous of the Brackenwoods; or, Slugs Crawling on Cedars

by FloriaTosca



Series: A Study In Moonlight [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Animals, Autistic Character, Case Fic, Cryptozoology, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Folklore, Gen, Gothic, Hound of the Baskervilles, Male-Female Friendship, Mystery, POV Female Character, Pacific Northwest, Shout-outs, Small Towns, Supernatural Elements, Synesthesia, Washington, Were-Creatures, Whole Plot Reference, hoh rainforest, local color, neuroatypical character, pacific northwest gothic, sasquatch - freeform, sherlock holmes homage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloriaTosca/pseuds/FloriaTosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A contemporary "Hound of the Baskervilles" homage set amid the rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula rather than the moors of Devon.  Featuring female Holmes and Watson analogues, much Pacific Northwestern local color, and a surprising number of therianthropes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Problem

**Author's Note:**

> A Tamanous is a kind of monster or hostile spirit-creature from Pacific Northwestern Native American mythology.

    It was unseasonably warm for June in Seattle, in the the sense that the weather actually felt like early summer rather than a milder and more flower-bedecked version of late February.  I was working for the school district at this time, and I confess, I was looking forward to summer vacation every bit as eagerly as my young clients did.  I love my job, but the comic book “occupational therapist by day, crime fighter by night” business can be a bit tiring.

    Of course, since I took up with Viviane, my life has followed more fictional conventions than is strictly reasonable, and even the _thought_ of “finally, I’ll be able to take a bit of a breather” is just begging the universe to drop a big lump of excitement in my lap.  Even at the time, bizarre as the particulars of the case were, the peculiar problems of Hal Brackenwood were not completely unexpected.

    I was coming home late after a session with one of my private clients and a couple of quick errands.  Because of the pleasant weather, I’d taken my motor scooter out, and I took a rather indirect route on the drive back.  I could have zipped around playing Audrey Hepburn indefinitely if I hadn’t been concerned about getting home before Seattle Rush Hour™ set in.

    My landlady was out working in the garden when I got home, being avidly supervised by a small spaniel I didn’t recognise.  I waved to her.  “ _Salve_ , Mrs. D!  How is everything?”

    “Everything’s fine, honey,” Mrs. Gloria Daye replied.  “One of your relatives stopped by with a box of produce for you.  Strawberries, peas, fava beans, and some kind of salad greens.  I gave the box to Viviane, since you weren’t in.”

    “Thanks,” I said.  “Now I know what we’re having for dinner, assuming Viv hasn’t used them all to make Salad Golems or something equally sinister.”

    “You’re welcome,” Mrs. Daye said.  “Oh, by the way, a young woman dropped in to see Viviane about, oh, fifteen minutes ago.  A client, I imagine.  She brought Toby here over.”

    “Probably,” I said.  Toby had trotted up to me and was looking up at me with an expectant expression.  I crouched down and held my hand out for him to sniff.  “Viv doesn’t do a lot of entertaining.  Well, thanks.  Oh, by the way, do you want anything out of the box?  Viv and I can only eat so much salad, and she doesn’t do bitter greens anyway.”

    “Thank you, but I’ve got my own greens starting to come in.”  Mrs. Daye gestured at the lettuce bed she was weeding.  “Most of the stronger flavored salad greens can be cooked, you know.  Just add some soy sauce or fried onion to counteract the bitterness.  They wilt down like crazy, too.”

    “Sounds good.  I might have to try this if I can’t convince Her Highness that raw escarole is fit for human consumption and not, in fact, full of subtle and elaborate biological defense mechanisms.  ‘Bye, Mrs. D.”  I waved, gave Toby a parting scritch behind the ears, and let myself into the building.

    I walked into the apartment, and noticed Viviane sitting in our tiny living room with a small, dark-haired, nerdy looking woman about our age.  They were sipping glasses of iced mint tea and were deeply engaged in a conversation I couldn’t completely follow that seemed to be about pill bugs.

    …”and that’s not even getting into giant isopods,” the visitor was saying, as she seemed to notice the presence of a third person in the room.  “Oh.  Hello!  You must be the roommate.”

    “Yes,” I said, as I put away my helmet and jacket.

    “Doctor Katherine Morrissey, allow me to introduce my dear friend and associate Marcella Argento.  Marcella, Doctor Morrissey,” Viviane said.

    I noticed Doctor Morrissey regarding me with a slightly softer version of Viviane’s laser stare through her glasses.  “Argento.... so, Silver Moon or Lupa?” she asked.

    Blink blink.  “The Sicilian branch of Children of the Silver Moon.  On my dad’s side.”

    “Ah, thank you,” she said.  “I didn’t intend to be intrusive, but lycanthropology is a particular interest of mine.”   _It must be_ , I thought, _Most people look at me and see a perfectly normal baseline human with pointier than average teeth._

    “Now, Doctor Morrissey,” Viviane said, “Pray tell us what your business is here.  Your message yesterday was intriguing, but woefully short of useful information.”  I used this shift in the conversation as an opportunity to take my boots off and duck into the kitchen for a glass of iced tea.

    “Oh, yes, of course!” Doctor Morrissey said.  “Well, it’s a strange and complicated story.  How much detail do you want?”

    “My work is founded on details, Doctor.”

    “All right, then,” said our visitor, as she took some printouts out of her purse.  “Glad I brought these.  Oh, and you can call me Katherine, if you like.  Or Kate.  I’m actually a veterinarian.”

    “Primarily house pets, I see, though you do treat small livestock on occasion.”

    “You are good,” said our visitor.  “Should I leave out the details I already sent you?”

    “You might as well tell us everything,” Viviane said.  “It won’t take much longer, and Marcella will need to be filled in anyway.”

    “Right, then,” I said.  “How long and chatty is this going to be?  Because if it’s going to be too terribly involved, maybe we should just bring a pitcher of water or something out here so we don’t have to keep getting up for refills.  Exposition is thirsty work in weather like this.”

    “I do appreciate your knack for anticipating practical problems, Marcé,” Viviane said.  Katherine Morrissey nodded in agreement, but neither of them, I noticed, showed any sign of springing up and heading for the kitchen.  Okay then.  Rolling my eyes just a bit, I made up a pitcher of ice water, and, while I was at it, refilled our ice cube trays.

    “Thank you, Marcé,” Viviane said, as I sat back down.  “Now, Katherine, what brings you here?”

    “Quite a lot, actually.  I told you it was complicated,” said Katherine.  “I live and work in Mesopotamia, a small town on the Olympic Peninsula, near the Hoh Rainforest.  It’s situated near branches of several local rivers, which is the reason for the name.  Mesopotamia was founded in the late nineteenth century, and logging was the major industry there for decades.  Nowadays it’s fairly popular with hikers, kayakers, other touristy types who want to avoid all the Twilight fans flocking to Forks nowadays, and cryptozoologists.”

    “Pardon?” Viviane said.  “The first three are fairly obvious, but what is the attraction for cryptozoologists?”  She raised an eyebrow.

    “Mesopotamia’s popular with Sasquatch hunters,” Katherine explained.  “Like a lot of the Northwestern indigenous people, the local Native Americans do have legends of the hairy wild people of the forest, but there’s no evidence that this has ever been a particularly prominent part of their mythology.  I believe that Mesopotamia’s variation of the legend only gained local prominence in the early 1900s, and nobody outside Clallam County except a few folklorists paid it any mind until the fifties.”

    “All of this is interesting, and no doubt instructive,” said Viviane.  “But is this relevant to the case at hand?”

    “Actually, yes,” Katherine said.

    “Murder at a cryptozoology convention?” I suggested.

    Katherine shook her head.  “Like I said, it’s complicated.  And very much immersed in local history and legend, if you want the context.”

    “Pray continue,” Viviane said.

    “Mesopotamia, despite its fancy name, is an unpretentious place,” Katherine said.  “Since its founding, the only really wealthy people in town have been the Brackenwoods.  Hugo Brackenwood was a British immigrant who made his fortune in lumber in the 1880s and built a huge Gothic Revival mansion out of local woods as a testament to his achievements.  He was a robber-baron of the old school.  Hard-working, sharp, and determined, but proud as the devil and a litter of pedigreed cats put together, and by all accounts, not one to be merciful to his enemies.  Or to his competitors.  Or to people who, while innocently minding their own business, happened to inadvertently stand in his way.”

“I get the picture,” I said.

“He was not a popular man, despite his financial contributions to the town.  Near the end of his life, he came into conflict with the leader of the local Native American community.  There were complaints about local logging activity clogging the streams and interfering with fishing.  Now, there wasn’t much these people could do to him, and there are no records that they even made any threats, but old Brackenwood was insulted as a matter of principle.  Apparently, at a dinner for some of his out of town robber-baron friends, he got into a drunken rant about how the devil would take him before ‘a bunch of blankety-blank savages’ - I’m pretty sure that’s not what he actually said, but you know how old books are about reprinting cuss words - could tell him what to do in his own town.  And then two days later he was out hunting and a bear ate him.  At least, that was the official story.  But few locals actually believed it, because the hunter who found his corpse said that he didn’t have the characteristic injuries of a bear attack.  The tracks were kind of odd-looking, too.  I’ve seen drawings.”

“All this is very interesting from a folkloric perspective,” Viviane said.  “But where do I come in?”

“Because the latest heir of Brackenwood Hall died this week, and there were bear-like footprints near his corpse.”

Viviane’s expression shifted subtly, from “polite interest with a hint of impatience” to the intense, sharp-edged look she got when something really caught her interest.  “Really, Katherine?  How very singular.  Did you see these tracks yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Wait a minute.  Just to clarify - this took place at Brackenwood Hall, right?  And Brackenwood Hall is on a pretty big lot and not smack in the middle of town?”

Katherine looked vaguely puzzled.  “Yes, about five acres.  There used to be more, but Maggie Brackenwood - Hugo’s granddaughter - turned a bunch of the marshy land by the river into a bird sanctuary.”

“So, with all due respect, Kate,” I said, “How do you know a bear wasn’t just wandering about the grounds and wanted to know if the late heir had anything edible in his pockets when he died?”

“I’ve considered the possibility,” Katherine said.  “That, or something like it, may even be true.  But the whole affair just had so much weirdness about it that I couldn’t properly put together.  So,” she smiled a little, self-deprecatingly, and shrugged, “I call in the expert.”  She topped up her water, took a drink, paused a little to gather her thoughts, and continued, “It was an odd place for a wandering bear to be.  Mr. Charles Brackenwood’s body was found on a path going through a stretch of open ground near the topiary juniper and the wishing well.  It wasn’t near any garbage cans, pet food, or edible landscaping - not so much as a blackberry bramble.”

“That is odd,” I said.  “I’m no expert, but I don’t believe bears are fond of gin.”

Viviane was leaning back in her chair, with her fingers steepled under her chin, wearing an expression of rapt contemplation.  “What, pray, was the condition of the late Mr. Brackenwood’s body when it was found, Katherine?”

“Well, he didn’t lie there long,” Katherine said.  “Mr. Brackenwood had one of those medical alert necklaces and he managed to set it off before he collapsed.  The butler and housekeeper live on the premises, and they knew his routine very well.  They found him right away.  The first people they called were me and the doctor - I got there first, so I got a good look at everything.”

“Yes?”  Viviane continued to listen intently.

“The weather had been drizzling off and on all day.  The path winding by the topiary garden was covered with gravel, but the gravel hadn’t been replenished in a few years and was getting sparse in patches.  The path is - I’m not much good at estimating distances, but it goes from the house to the gazebo at the edge of the woods.  There’re a few little side paths going to other parts of the grounds.  The path isn’t completely level.  There aren’t any true puddles, at least not this time of year, but there are definitely some patches where the ground is softer and retains more moisture than others.  This makes following any sort of trail rather challenging, you must admit.  The only lighting is near the house and at the gazebo - Mr. Brackenwood was carrying a flashlight.  Otherwise, the path is pretty dark.  This is the country.”

“Thank you.  You’ve made yourself very clear.”

“So you see why I wouldn’t have noticed the bear tracks at all if Mr. Brackenwood hadn’t fallen near a piece of relatively soft, mostly-bare dirt.  His body was untouched.  No bites, no claw marks, no signs of scavenging.”  

“So he wasn’t killed by some vengeful bear-spirit taking out its wrath on the family,” Viviane said dryly.

“From a medical standpoint, Viviane,” said Katherine.  “He died of cardiac arrest from a heart attack.”

“I believe that is not an uncommon practice among older gentlemen,” Viviane stated calmly.

“Well, yes, you have a point there.  Mr. Brackenwood was in his sixties, and he did have some heart trouble.  Doctor Sacker had finally convinced him to make an appointment with a cardiologist in Port Angeles, but no one expected anything like this.”

I nodded sympathetically.  Viviane sat still for a few moments, processing, then said, “Thank you, you have set the scene admirably, but what is the element that requires further investigation?  An older country gentleman with known heart problems stumbles upon a bear during his evening stroll and has a heart attack, and the bear ambles away before the body is found.  People keeling over dead from sudden emotional strain are rather less common in real life than in fiction, but the association of stress and cardiac illness is reasonably well documented.”

Katherine sighed, and poured herself a glass of water.  “What I have told you, Viviane, are the public facts.”

“There are private ones?” Viviane asked dryly.

“Mostly speculation,” Katherine admitted.

“Let us have them, if you please.”

“Nothing wrong with speculating, if you don’t get your theories and your facts mixed up,” I said.  “Isn’t it part of the scientific method?”

“Okay then,” Katherine said.  “The first odd thing about this: I wasn’t being entirely accurate when I said that his body had been untouched.  There was no sign of external injury, but he was lying on his back when I found him, and from the dirt on his clothes and his bent eyeglass frames, it seems more likely that he collapsed on his face.”

“Maybe the butler or housekeeper turned him over when they found his body,” I suggested.

Katherine nodded.  “That’s what Occam’s Razor would suggest.  There’s also the fact that his medical alert pendant was slightly cracked when we found it, but it hadn’t been crunched under his body.”

“Indeed,” Viviane said.  “Tell me - if someone wanted to approach this part of the grounds without being seen from the house, how could they do it?”

“It wouldn’t be hard if they knew the area,” Katherine said.  “If you could take your time and weren’t afraid of getting dirty, the best way would be to come in through the woods adjoining the bird sanctuary.”

“You mentioned that the bird sanctuary was once Brackenwood property,” Viviane said.  “Are there any barriers up now?”

“Not as such,” Katherine said.  “Some of the land along the property line is too swampy to navigate easily, and the rest is covered with forest undergrowth or this giant overgrown Oregon Grape hedge.  None of the paths cross over, except maybe a deer trail.”

“But there are no actual fences or artificial security systems,” Viviane said.

“Right.”

“Did Mr. Brackenwood do this often - go for walks around the grounds in the evening?” I asked.

“When the weather was pleasant. He was pretty active, despite his heart problems,” Katherine said.  “He was carrying binoculars when he died.”

“Ah,” Viviane said.  “Fascinating creatures, owls.”

“And there was another thing,” Katherine said.  She picked up her glass of ice water, swirled it a bit without drinking any of it, and watched the colliding ice cubes like they contained some oracular secret.  “After the doctor arrived, I got out of his way and started looking around the grounds for anything out of place that would explain the whole business.  I did not succeed-”

“Clearly, or you wouldn’t be asking my advice,” Viviane said.

“-but I did find something really weird and out of place.  I have no idea if it’s even relevant, but - I found a flashlight and crowbar someone had stashed near the wishing well, wrapped in a couple of plastic trash bags.”

“How very peculiar,” Viviane said.

I wondered briefly why, particularly in light of our visitor’s interests, nobody had brought up therianthropy.  Viviane must have thought something similar.  “Indeed,” Viviane said.  “Doctor Morrissey - sorry, Katherine - this is shaping up to be something most singular.  May I trouble you with another question?  Do you recall what the phase of the moon was that night?”

“Hmm... waxing gibbous, I believe.  About five or six days until the full moon.  It was a bit overcast, but there was a decent amount of moonlight... that’s not why you wanted to know, is it?”  Viviane nodded.  

“Possible but unlikely,” Katherine continued.  “Mr. Brackenwood isn’t known to have been acquainted with any werebears.  If there are any therianthropes in the area besides a family of wererat survivalists and a few werewolves who moved in from La Push, they keep it to themselves.”

“And even if Mr. Brackenwood had been friends or enemies or business partners with a closeted werebear, that wouldn’t really solve the major issue here.  Which is, ‘What were they doing sneaking around Brackenwood Hall in bear mode that night?’” I pointed out.

“Quite right,” Viviane said briskly.  “Katherine, how is the visibility from the house to the relevant part of the garden?”

“Visible from some of the upper-story windows when the weather cooperates, but the property in general is filled with awkwardly positioned trees and not well lit.  I suppose it’s a security risk, but there really isn’t much to steal.  Except for the house itself, all the antiques that haven’t been sold or donated to museums already are either very bulky or in less than mint condition.  Well, I guess the house would count as bulky.  Anyway, if you have more layout questions, the Mesopotamia Chamber of Commerce website has a lot of information.  It’s a local attraction.  They do tours of the gardens in the summer.”

“Stately homes of the Olympic Peninsula?” I suggested.

“Something like that.”

“Thank you,” Viviane said.

“You’re welcome.  But, well, I really wish now that the Brackenwoods had invested in some security cameras.  What on earth was the bear doing on that pathway?  And what was it that made Charles Brackenwood - who was not an emotionally volatile man, or known to be skittish around wildlife - sprint off for a few yards like a bat out of Hell and then collapse of heart failure, when there’s no evidence the bear ever took a swipe at him?  And who’s been stashing their tools by the wishing well?”  She downed the rest of her water and sighed.  “I’ve been quiet about my suspicions, but there’s a general idea locally that something about the incident was off.  I suppose it’s what you should expect in a small town full of gossips and cranks.  Somebody heard about the bear tracks, and somehow that turned into our local Sasquatch - who is, you’ll recall, a bit more bear-like than the conventional interpretation- skulking up to the Brackenwood property for purposes unknown.  Opinions are divided as to whether Sasquatch had benign intentions and accidentally scared Mr. Brackenwood to death, or whether he was the agent of Gaia’s judgement on the family for generations of arrogance and prosperity gained through exploitation of the environment.”  Katherine shrugged a little.

“Katherine,” Viviane said, “all this is most intriguing, but I must tell you, I am neither an ethologist nor an occult detective.  Mysteriously stealthy bears and forest spirit assassins are somewhat beyond my purview.”

“I know,” Katherine said.  She was wearing a bead bracelet made from some kind of polished seeds, and she started fiddling with it out of nervous excitement.  “But the thing is, I believe that there’s a human agent somewhere in all this.  Bears don’t use crowbars.  I know, I can be obsessive about things, and I hate to leave questions unanswered-”

“Kate,” I interrupted.  “Look who you’re talking to.  We are the last people on earth who are going to judge you for that.”

 “Right.  But in this situation, I believe there is a legitimate, practical need to know what’s going on.  If someone out there has hostile intentions towards the Brackenwoods, is the new heir going to be in danger?”  Katherine seemed a bit calmer now that she’d said everything, although she was still fiddling with her jewelry.

“Would that be Charles’s kid?” I asked.

“No, nephew,” Katherine said.  “Hal Brackenwood.  He’s lived most of his life in Canada.  He’s planning on staying in Seattle for a few days before going to look at the house.  I could introduce you, if you think it’s a good idea.”

“Yes,” Viviane said thoughtfully, “But not today.  Katherine, thank you for bringing this most singular problem to my attention.  Do you have any other relevant data?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“Very well, then.  You have my contact information if you suddenly recall something.  Feel free to place any relevant documents on the coffee table.”

This was, I knew, Viviane’s version of subtle hinting that she wanted to be alone to think.  “So, Kate, do you have any plans for dinner?”

“No,” she said.

“Well, our neighborhood has a lot of good restaurants that aren’t too ridiculously expensive.  Why don’t we go get something?  My treat.”  I turned to Viviane.  “Viv, you want me to pick something up for you?”

“Vegetable spring rolls if you get Southeast Asian.  Otherwise, don’t go to the trouble.”

“Right, then.  See you later, Viv.”

“Goodbye!”  Katherine gathered up her things and waved rather nervously before following me out the door.


	2. Interlude 1

Years of experience with Viviane’s work habits had taught me that my friend often preferred solitude when she had vast quantities of new information to process.  And if she did consider my input a necessary contribution to the investigation at its current stage, she would not be shy about letting me know.  Viviane had sent me no requests of this nature during my dinner with Kate Morrissey, nor had I heard from her as I walked Kate and Toby back to their hotel while Kate shared some of her best small town vet stories.  Fortunately, it was a warm evening and I had no urgent responsibilities at home, so I was at liberty to leave Viviane to her solitary ruminations and spend my evening away from the apartment.  
    It was after nine o’clock when I came home to an apartment that smelled oddly like a burning day spa, with a faint undertone of green vegetables and garlic.  Individually, the smells of woody incense - an unfamiliar evergreen with a sort of mossy green and cinnamon-bark brown scent - and several herbal and citrusy essential oils, including bergamot, peppermint, grapefruit, and what was probably clary sage, would have been pleasant enough.  All together, with the windows shut, they made an oddly bracing murk.  
    Viviane was sprawled on the sofa looking over a stack of computer printouts, and she glanced up as I entered our tiny living room.  “Hello, Marcé.  I trust you had a pleasant evening.  Caught a show?”  
    “In a way.  How did you know?”  
    “By the state of your hair, Marcella,” Viviane said, in her most deliberately enigmatic manner.  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes a little.  
    “Pray enlighten me, oh wise one,” I said, as I kicked off my sneakers, sauntered over to the couch, and perched on the arm of the sofa.  I was also doing my best not to choke on the aromatherapeutic fog that filled the room.  
    “We experienced a cloudburst between 7:03 and 7:32 this evening.  The state of your clothing and hair indicates that you weren’t caught in it.  If your hair had been seriously rained on and then left to dry on its own devices, it would be a great deal frizzier now.  Ergo, you spent that time indoors.  Barring the cloudburst, it was a pleasant evening, and you didn’t take your scooter out.  Let us assume that your eventual destination lay within walking distance-” Viviane turned her attention to my discarded shoes and scrutinized them intently “- Yes, that is good Capitol Hill dirt.  You can’t have been at the library during the downpour because it closes early on Fridays.  Shopping - perhaps, but if so, you didn’t buy anything.  None of your close friends live in the neighborhood.  The most plausible explanation is that you attended a movie or some casual live performance.”  
    “Brava!” I said.  “Poetry reading, technically.  I waited out the storm in that little coffee house-slash-bookstore that sells vegan jam tarts.  Not my usual scene, I’ll admit, but I was curious about Limerick Night.”  
    “I suppose writing in form is somewhat neglected nowadays,” Viviane said dryly.  
    “Indeed.  So, mind telling me what’s up with this,” I said, making a sort of wafting gesture around the room, “oh Miss Sephora-Sends-Me-Into-Sensory-Overload?”  
    “Well, it does,” Viviane protested.  “Their whole layout is decidedly unnavigable.”  
    “Hey, I’m not doubting you.  I’ve been there with you.  Remember when you were teaching me perfume identification and the sales clerk finally came over to make us stop messing with the testers?  We ran off and somehow wound up in the wilds of the mineral makeup section giggling about depleted uranium highlighter powder.”  
    “Never mind that depleted uranium, as the byproduct of a technological process, is not, in the strict geological sense, a mineral.  Although, considering the normal standards of scientific discourse in the beauty industry, it would not be unjust to assume that any company that puts radioactive waste in its eyeshadow isn’t going to be scrupulous about label terminology.”  
    “Fair enough, you’re the geologist,” I conceded.  “But what’s with all the smellies?  It’s like the Bonfire of the Aromatherapists in here.”  
    Viviane sniffed the air deliberately.  “Oh.  Yes.  I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to open the windows again, now that the rain’s stopped.  By the by, Marcé - is this cabbage season?”  
    I had enough experience with my friend’s conversational style that I wasn’t put off by the apparent non sequitur, but I still wanted to know what all this had to do with incense.  “Not particularly,” I said, as I opened the nearest windows.  “Unless you’re growing one of the short season varieties and got an early start.  Most of the spring-sown ones would be too small to bother with at this point, and any survivors from last year’s overwintering crop would be past their prime by now.”  
    “Is that so,” Viviane said meditatively.  “Then whatever possessed our neighbors to make such a vast quantity of that... peculiarly aromatic soup this evening?”  
    “Oh, was that it?  Viv, you are awfully lucky your ancestors made it out of Northern Europe.  As for the neighbors - maybe they have a CSA subscription and their farmer was cleaning out all the spring greens before the hot weather hits.”  
    “It is true, my initial motive was to obscure the scent of our neighbors’ dinner with something less distracting, but I was also conducting a little experiment in amateur aromatherapy.  I wanted to know if it would improve my focus or concentration.”  
    “All right, that makes sense,” I said.  “Did it?”  
    “Results were, I am afraid, inconclusive,” Viviane said.  “But it was a productive evening, all the same.”  
    “Figured out what’s up at Brackenwood Hall yet?” I asked.  
    “No, that calls for further contemplation and more data.  For the most part, I have been studying the setting for this little drama.  I am much obliged to the late Mr. Brackenwood for having the grace to die in such a picturesque and historically significant location.  It has simplified my research considerably.”  
    I gestured at her stack of papers.  “Found those at Brackenwood Hall’s fansite?”  
    “In a manner of speaking.  Someone in the Mesopotamia Historical Society harbors a great enthusiasm for historic architecture and gardening.  Brackenwood Hall’s description reads more like a heavily illustrated research paper than a tourist brochure.  Much of it was interesting but irrelevant historical background information or authorial rants about responsible old house ownership, but there was plenty of useful information available if one was willing to slog through it all.”  
    “Reminds me of college,” I said.  “Any pictures?”  
    “Many.”  Viviane began leafing through the stack of printouts.  “Most of them had clearly been taken to display the aesthetic qualities of the house and grounds, rather than to enable a practical reconstruction, but some of them were informative.  And there’s this one,” she handed me a sheet of paper, “which shows less of the relevant part of the grounds than I'd like, but manages to capture a certain gloomy grandeur, don’t you think?”  
    I looked at the picture in my hands.  “Gloomy grandeur” about covered it.  Brackenwood Hall was a big brooding eccentrically gorgeous pseudo-castle in that odd blend of historical styles particular to Victorians with more money and imagination than taste or sense.  With an exterior like that, it would have been a sin against nature if the house didn’t contain at least one secret passage, revolving bookcase, or shadowy corridor lined with creepy ancestral portraits.  “Good lord,” I said, “It’s like something out of a Gothic novel!”    
    “Rather appropriate, under the circumstances, don’t you think?”  
    “It certainly is a strange business,” I said.  “Even if you leave vengeful cryptid death-curses out of it.”  
    “And it may get far stranger before it’s unraveled,” Viviane said.  She did not sound terribly upset about the prospect.  “We should learn more tomorrow.  Doctor Morrissey called and arranged for us to meet with her and the new heir tomorrow morning.  His name is Hal Brackenwood, and he’s spent most of his adulthood in Canada.”  
    “Hal?  Do you think his parents were into Shakespeare, or science fiction?  I hope it was the first, since naming your offspring after an evil computer just strikes me as all kinds of inauspicious.”  
    “If you care that much, you can ask him tomorrow,” Viviane said.  “Now, how was Limerick Night?”


	3. Mr. Hal Brackenwood

 

  
   “Really, Marcé?  I respect your desire to make our visitors believe that we live with a higher standard of neatness than we normally do, but do we really need to put out new soap?  The old soap was less than half consumed, and hadn’t absorbed a bunch of stray water and gone gelatinous yet.  It’s still perfectly useable.”  
    “Ritual purity, Viv,” I said.  “Ritual purity.  Now would you be so good as to take these towels down to the laundry room?”  
    “As you wish, madam,” Viviane said.  To be fair to the woman, she was being reasonably helpful about tidying up the apartment for Katherine and Hal’s visit, even if she kept grumbling about ridiculous bourgeois standards of respectability as she did so.  
    “All right,” I said.  “Bathroom’s done, living room is picked up, the rolls are cooling, the parts of the kitchen visible from the living room are acceptably tidy... I think we’re done.  Now, they’re supposed to come over at ten, so there’s no point in starting the coffee and tea for another fifteen minutes... I’d say we’re at liberty for now.”  
     “I don’t see why you’re going to so much trouble with the refreshments,” Viviane said.  “We do live in Seattle, you know.  It’s not as if they won’t encounter plenty of opportunities to caffeinate themselves on the way over.  Is this some kind of sacred hospitality thing?”  
    “You could say that,” I admitted.  “It’s just how I was raised, you know?  Never have someone over during mealtime and then not feed them.  It just isn’t done.  And we’d need to have breakfast anyway, so it’s not really all that much more trouble.  And it just gets awkward if things run late and everybody gets hungry and cranky.”  
    “Interesting way to think of it,” said Viviane.  “Some people would consider that a useful incentive to keep things concise.”  
    “Well, they may have a point.  But I don’t think that somebody incurably in love with their own voice is really going to be that considerate of their audience’s blood sugar.”  
    Our guests arrived promptly at ten o’clock.  My first thought, upon meeting Hal Brackenwood, was 'Why, hello, Mr. Mercury.  Clearly, life as a Canadian lumberjack agrees with you.'  My second was 'All right, whose bright idea was it to cross a Maine Coon with a lynx?'  
    Hal Brackenwood was an athletically built guy a bit shorter than Viv.  He looked about thirty, and had short black hair, dark eyes, light olive skin with lots of healthy outdoorsy glow, a very manly jawline, and an impressive mustache.  He was dressed casually but neatly in a plaid flannel button-down, jeans, and boots, and he smelled like soap, spruce woods, clean cat fur, and mild anxiety.  He was accompanied by the largest domestic cat I had ever seen.  
    “Good morning, ladies,” he said.  “I’m Hal Brackenwood, and this here,” he gestured down at the giant feline attempting to wind her leash around his legs, “is Queenie.  I hope it’s not a problem that I brought her over.  I didn’t feel right about leaving her at the hotel for too long.  She has a habit of hiding in closets and scaring the staff.”        
    “Not a problem, Mr. Brackenwood,” Viviane said.  “Pray sit down.  I am Viviane Malifaux, and this is my good friend and associate Marcella Argento.  You had concerns about the circumstances of your uncle’s demise?”  
    “Well, yes, in a way,” Hal said.  “The whole business is pretty strange.  But it’s not just that.  Weird things have been happening to me since I came to Seattle.”  
    “Really?” Viviane said, with genuine interest.  “Care to explain?”  
    “Well, the day after I checked into my hotel, I had a sock disappear.  Just one.  Vanished into thin air.  I didn’t report it to the management because I didn’t want the staff to get in trouble if it turned out that it had just rolled under the bed or something, and who would steal one sock?”  
    “An odd occurrence, although hardly without precedent,” Viviane said dryly.  
    “Yes, I know, but things got weirder this morning.”  
    “Indeed?  Pray continue,” Viviane said.  
    “The first missing sock showed up again this morning with the clean towels,” Hal said.  “But now another one’s gone missing.”  
    “Most singular,” Viviane said.  “I wonder what made the first sock unsuitable.  And was the first one washed before it was returned?”  
    “I don’t know, really,” Hal admitted.  “It was clean, but then, it was clean when I lost it, too.  I’d only bought it yesterday and hadn’t worn it yet.”  
    'Socks, but not new ones?  Wait a minute...' I thought.  Viviane’s thoughts must have been along the same track, since her next question to Hal was, “Mr. Brackenwood, had your second missing sock been previously worn?”  
    Hal looked a bit taken aback by this, although not insulted.  “Yes, actually.  It’s one of a pair I brought with me from Canada.  It actually disappeared out of my laundry basket.”  
    “Ah.  Thank you.”  
    “Thank you, ma’am, for taking this silly business seriously.  But the sock business is actually pretty normal compared to this.”  He took out a postcard - a fairly conventional Seattle skyline picture that probably could have been purchased at a dozen gift shops in the city - and turned it over.  The address and message had been written on a word processor, printed, and then cut out and pasted on.  The message read:   
AS YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE OR YOUR SANITY KEEP AWAY FROM THE FOREST.


	4. The Breakfast Meeting

    “May I?” Viviane asked.  She picked up the mysterious postcard and scrutinized it, which included holding it up to the light and peeling up the edge of one of the pasted-on phrases in order to closely examine the glue.  “Well now... what we have here is a fine example of the inscrutability of the commonplace.  Black ink, laser printer, fourteen point Times New Roman font, common printer paper, widely available postcard - your humble correspondent has a talent for obscurity.”  
    “Then you can’t tell me anything?” Hal asked.  
    “Oh, I can,” Viviane said, a bit crisply.  “The speculation to proof ratio is higher than I’d like, but unfortunately, in these degenerate times, people only conduct sensitive correspondence on watermarked stationery in old novels.  Your correspondent is somewhat computer-literate, obviously, but most likely of an earlier generation.   A more technologically oriented person would set up a pseudonymous email account for something like this.  The printer and paper are of a type that would be easily accessible to a non-computer-owner, using a public library computer or something of that nature.  Mr. Brackenwood, who knows that you’re in Seattle at present?”  
    “Well, everyone here, obviously,” he said.  “And the Pickfords.  And a few people in Canada - my mom, my boyfriend, a few of my friends and people I worked with.  And whoever they’ve told, I suppose.  I don’t do a lot of social networking.”  
    “Considering your lack of local connections,” Viviane continued, “it is, at present, most plausible to assume that, while this was posted in town, your correspondent is not a Seattle native.  The message could have been printed out at the library or another publicly accessible computer very easily, the glue is-” she peered intently at the peeled-up edge of the message and rubbed her finger along it delicately “an ordinary white glue stick, and the scissors were straight-bladed and small, as one can discern from the pattern of cuts.  Basic school/office supplies, easy to acquire in a variety of locations and fairly cheap, suitable for a one-shot project.  It does suggest that our mysterious friend had fairly small hands and no motor control problems.”    During Viviane’s discussion of the mysterious postcard, Queenie had ceased trying to entangle her human minion and begun slowly sneaking toward the couch where Viviane and I sat.    
    Hal sighed.  “Great.  Just great.  I have a mysterious stalker who may or may not be a little old lady with a sock fetish.”  
    “So, you think the same person is responsible for the postcard and the missing sock shenanigans?” I asked.

“There is probably a connection,” Viviane said, “But I do not believe that the same party is responsible for both.  If your mystery correspondent had access to your room they could have left a note.”  Queenie, by this point, had padded up to Viviane.  Viviane held out a free hand for Queenie to sniff, but otherwise did not acknowledge her existence.

“A conspiracy.  Wonderful.  I’ve been in America for three days and I’m already up to my ears in a spy novel.”

“Spies?  I thought we were in an ambiguously supernatural murder mystery...” Kate Morrissey said.  She looked a bit confused.  I can’t say I blamed her.

“Please, let us not joke about espionage and sinister intrigues,” Viviane said.  “The last thing this increasingly convoluted scenario needs is the involvement of my sister.”  Viviane had a point.  This whole business of mysterious missives and ancestral curses was creepy enough without including Undine the Omniscient Ninja Bureaucrat.

“Wait -” Hal said.  “Mystery I get, but where do the ambiguously supernatural murders come in?  No offense, ladies, but I’m starting to feel just a bit left out of the loop here.”

“A perfectly reasonable sentiment, Mr. Brackenwood,” Viviane said.  “Katherine would be the best qualified to fill you in.  If you don’t mind?”

“Fine with me,” Kate said.

“So,” I said.  “Have you guys had breakfast yet?  We have coffee, tea, rolls, and fruit.”

“You don’t need to go to all that trouble,” Kate said.  

“It’s no trouble,” I said.  “Everything’s already prepared.  The most I’d have to do is set things out and maybe reheat the drinks.”

“Then I would be delighted to partake,” Hal said gallantly.  

“Well, thanks then,” said Kate.

“Everything’ll be on the dining room sideboard,” I said, as I ducked out of the living room.  “Feel free to help yourselves if all the exposition makes you hungry.”  Our “sideboard” was actually a repurposed TV cabinet from Ikea.

As Kate filled Hal in on the peculiar circumstances in which he’d found himself enmeshed, Viviane and I occupied ourselves eating breakfast and making friends with Queenie.  Viviane had a rare way with cats.  Her usual strategy was to ignore them until they showed interest themselves, and then to dole out attention in tiny intervals until the cat chose to express their burgeoning affection by jumping on her lap or something equally unambiguous.  I don’t know if she was so successful because cats found her lack of sudden moves reassuring, or because felidae, being contrary creatures, couldn’t resist someone who plays hard to get.

“Well now,” Hal said, after Kate had finished her spiel, “what have I got myself into?  I knew a bit about the local Sasquatch legends around Mesopotamia, and the ‘family curse,’ but I never took any of it seriously.  This all seems to be getting stranger by the minute.  I’m not sure if it’s a case for the pols, a paranormal investigator, or a priest.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I said.

“And then there’s my missing sock, and this,” he said, gesturing toward the mysterious postcard on the coffee table.  “So either someone besides my uncle takes the family curse seriously, or they are trying to mess with my head.”

“Or there could be something else going that they don’t want you to get mixed up in, without any vengeful forest spirits necessarily being involved,” I pointed out.

“We could speculate on that all day,” Viviane said.  “The real question is, with what you know now, will you still be going to Brackenwood Hall?”

“Of course!  I might not spend my life there if the climate or the local culture doesn’t agree with me, but I am not going to abandon my heritage over a few ghost stories,” Hal said, with unexpected vehemence.

“Not unreasonable,” Viviane said.  “If anyone does hold hostile intentions toward you, they can reach you as easily in Seattle as in Mesopotamia.  I would not, however, suggest that you go back alone.”

“I won’t be.  Kate here will be coming back with me.”

“With no slight intended to Katherine’s value as an ally,” Viviane continued, “she has her own responsibilities.  Will your boyfriend be joining you?”

“Not right away.  Kurt’s going to be studying polar bears up in the Territories for the next few months.”

“That is unfortunate,” Viviane said.

“Why don’t you come with me?  I’d think you’d be the best qualified to figure out what’s actually going on,” Hal pointed out.

“Mr. Brackenwood, I have every intention of investigating your situation myself, however, it is impractical for me to leave Seattle at present, due to some time-sensitive inquiries I’m conducting.  I recommend that Marcella comes with you.  There’s no one better to have at your side when things get uncomfortably interesting.”

_'Should’ve seen that coming..._ '  “Viv?  While I appreciate your confidence very much, I’m afraid that the issue is not that simple.  I’m really not at liberty to make any impromptu trips until school lets out-”

“When will that be?” Hal asked.

“End of next week.  And I’ll have to make arrangements with my private clients to reschedule.  I am very willing, don’t get me wrong, I’m just trying to work out the practicalities here.”

“This is Clallam County, not Mars,” Kate pointed out.  “There is a ferry to Seattle about an hour’s drive away.”

“And I can wait until next week, no problem.  I was planning to stay in Seattle a bit longer anyway and do a bit of touristing,” said Hal.

“Then I would be more than happy to accompany you as your co-investigator and amateur bodyguard.”

“Ms. Argento, I am very much obliged to you,” Hal said.

“Why, Mr. Brackenwood, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  It’s not every day a girl gets to to be part of a real life Gothic novel.”


	5. Brackenwood Hall

    Between my normal routine and the preparations for the upcoming trip, the week passed quickly enough.  Kate Morrissey left Seattle on Monday, accompanied by Queenie, and Hal Brackenwood and I followed her on the Saturday morning ferry.

Along with purchasing mosquito repellant, rearranging my professional obligations, and attempting to fit a travel wardrobe suitable for all the potential vagaries of Pacific Northwestern late spring weather into one suitcase and a duffle bag, my preparations for the trip involved a lot of cooking and freezing.  If Viviane’s current project had her so occupied that she’d pass up a chance to explore the Brackenwood case herself, I was under no illusion that she’d find the energy to make dinner.

Saturday morning was beautiful, although a bit chilly.  Viviane had overcome her usual prejudice against getting up before nine a.m., and accompanied Hal and me to the ferry terminal.  “Marcella, remember to keep me informed, even if nothing you encounter strikes you as overtly dangerous,” she told me.  “Mr. Brackenwood, I would advise you to be particularly careful when outdoors after dark.”

“Right,” he said.

“You brought your weapons?” she asked me.

“My gun and my taser,” I told her.  “I hope I won’t need them, but...”  Hal looked a bit perturbed at this.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’re in a locked case,” I reassured him.  “Our sock thief shouldn’t be able to steal them and do anything nefarious.  And I am well versed in firearms safety, I assure you.”  Hal didn’t seem to find this quite as comforting as I’d hoped.  Fortunately, any lingering awkwardness was dispelled when boarding began.

“Farewell, both of you,” Viviane said.  “And Marcé- if you get a chance, I would be much obliged if you’d include any observations you had of the local invertebrates along with your case notes.”

“Sure,” I said.  “I can’t promise I can deliver much beyond ‘blankety-blank mosquitos,’ but I’ll certainly do my best.  And you, please remember to eat and sleep once in a while, okay?”  We hugged, a bit awkwardly, and then Hal and I ducked back into his car and waited to drive on board.

“Do you think one of us should keep an eye on the car?” Hal asked, once the ferry was under way.  

“I really don’t think it’s necessary, if we lock up,” I said.  “We don’t even know if our mysterious correspondent is on board.  They could’ve left Seattle days ago.  A ferry in the middle of the Sound seems like an awkward place to do anything terribly mysterious anyway.  Too many potential witnesses and not enough escape routes.  It’d probably be a good idea if we didn’t lose track of each other, just in case something odd does happen, but no point in fretting too much.  I don’t think vindictive forest spirits can swim,” I said.

“Why not?” Hal said.  “Bears can.”

“You have a point.  Want to get out of this glorified floating parking garage and explore a bit?”

We quickly exhausted the ferry’s interior attractions, and, since the weather was pleasant, we wound up outdoors on deck, enjoying the relatively fresh air and people-watching.  A number of people passed through, to stretch their legs or for the sake of a change of scenery, but few of them seemed to take any notice of us.  However, one man in his late thirties did approach Hal and talked to him for a few minutes, before handing Hal a leaflet and taking his leave.  I discreetly followed him for about five minutes between the man parting company with Hal and visiting the men’s room.  In that time, he did not proselytize another person - was he out of tracts, taking a break, or was something stranger afoot?

“Marcella, I know Viviane said to be vigilant, and you’re probably really bored right now, but you don’t have to stalk that guy all over the ship!”

“I am not stalking him, I’m just seizing the opportunity to stretch my legs while learning more about this curiously curious gentleman at the same time.”

“He was a missionary!  It’s what they do!”

“Or so he claimed,” I said darkly.  “Viviane disguised herself as a Mormon missionary a few times when she needed to poke around a residential neighborhood without looking suspicious.  It’s a great cover story if you’re a decent actor.”

“You have lead an odd life, haven’t you?”

The rest of the voyage passed without incident, except for a brief altercation between one of our fellow passengers and a larcenous seagull.  When we rejoined our vehicle, as we expected, there were no mysterious cut and pasted messages tucked under the windshield wipers.

 

We disembarked in Port Angeles, which, while pretty enough, seemed like a fairly typical moderately sized coastal Northwest city, except with the water and the mountains all in the wrong direction.  But as we drove west, the scenery began to change.

I’ve lived in Washington all my life, and being an outdoorsy sort, I consider myself well acquainted with the ecology of the Puget Sound region and the foothills of the Cascades.  This was something different.  Yes, there were mountains and rivers and evergreens, but the terrain began to look less and less like the maritime forests I’d grown up with, and more like a cross between Middle-earth and the Carboniferous period.  I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to see a giant dragonfly.  

The sensation of primal solitude was somewhat interrupted, unfortunately, by the presence of an odd number of police cars.  “What on Earth could they all be doing here?” I asked.  “I didn’t even know there were that many people out here to arrest.  Are they all busting a moonshine ring or something?”  

“I have no idea,” Hal said.  “Sign says there’s a cafe on the next exit.  Maybe they’ll know.  At least it’d give us a chance to stretch our legs and have lunch.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Cafe” turned out to be something of an understatement.  The Hungry Sasquatch was a rustically decorated little establishment that offered everything from espresso and home-baked cherry pie to chainsaw sculptures, souvenir postcards, and salmon lures.  The waitress/barista/cashier on duty was a pleasant looking middle-aged woman who was more than happy to talk to us.

“Sure, I noticed the cops.  I may wear glasses, honey, but I am not blind.  They’re probably all out looking for that bank robber who escaped from Clallam Bay a few days ago.  They think he’s going to try hiding out in the mountains.”

“Why go to all that trouble rather than try to lose yourself in a big city where at least you have indoor plumbing?  He must be either very intrepid or really conspicuous looking,” I said.

“Maybe,” said the waitress.  “Or maybe after prison he really wanted some privacy and fresh air.  I know I would.”

With our waitress such a cheerful source of information, it would have been ungrateful not to stay for lunch.  The Hungry Sasquatch’s lunch menu was pretty basic: soups, sandwiches, burgers and fries, and breakfast dishes, prepared with decent skill but not a lot of flair.  The coffee and desserts, however, were outstanding.  I don’t think I’ve ever had better strawberry rhubarb pie.

We drove on, and the terrain grew ever more lush and primeval.  The trees became bigger and mossier, the atmosphere became more humid, and even in the early afternoon, the lighting was shady verging on gloomy.  This wasn’t just Middle-earth, this was Mirkwood.  “Good lord,” I said.  “I don’t know whether to expect dinosaurs or a witch’s cottage in a place like this.”

“Yeah,” Hal said dreamily.  “Isn’t it awesome?”

“Yes,” I had to admit, “It is.”

 

We arrived at Brackenwood Hall in the early afternoon.  The house was so surrounded by big trees that, despite the size of the place, I couldn’t get a good look at it until we were practically at the gate.  It was worth the wait.

When I had first seen Brackenwood Hall in Viviane’s printed-out picture, I’d assumed that the trees were the size of the second-growth Douglas Firs I knew best, rather than the prehistoric leviathans popular on this side of the sound.  This had led me to underestimate the size of the mansion by a considerable margin.  But it wasn’t just size that made Brackenwood Hall so impressive.  The place had presence, and, in a way, a personality.  Not necessarily a likeable personality, by human standards - the house had the air of a Byronic anti-hero with a megalomaniac streak and a disturbing fondness for stained glass - but still, one had to respect the ability of Douglas Fir planks to convey that much emotion.

As we drove up the long driveway, I took a good long look at the grounds around me, but I didn’t notice anything of interest.  Either we were too far away or it had been too long since the late Mr. Brackenwood’s death for any forensically relevant details to survive.

Mr. Pickford let Hal and me in and led us to the parlor.  The interior of Brackenwood Hall, while impressive, did not have quite the brooding grandeur of the exterior.  While the original hardwood floors and woodwork had survived, some past owner had installed electric lights, and the furnishings were an odd mix of well-used antiques and simpler middle-class pieces from every decade  between the 1930s and the 2000s.  

Mr. Pickford was a tall, dark-haired man in his forties, handsome in a dignified sort of way, and very formal, like a butler in a novel.  I wondered if his slight British accent was an affectation.  His wife was a few years younger, equally polite but less stuffy, but beneath her superficial friendliness, there seemed to be something preying on her mind.  She smelled anxious.  After introductions all around, we arranged to dine at six, and Mr. Pickford showed Hal and me to our rooms.  Even after unpacking, this left us with a couple of hours’ worth of spare time, and I was feeling restless after all that sitting and driving.  

“Hal, I’m going out exploring.  Want to come with?” I asked.

“If you’re going to Kate’s, I’ll come with you to pick up Queenie, but I’ll be heading home after that.  I want to explore the house.”

“Okay.  Tell me if you find any secret passages.”

Kate Morrissey was happy to see us, and not entirely because we’d be taking Queenie off her hands.  “I am very glad you made it over safely.  Did you encounter any trouble?”

“Not unless Jehovah’s Witnesses on the ferry count,” Hal said.  “Marcella seemed to think he was acting suspicious, but...” he smiled and shrugged.

“Hey, I’m the only detective here, I have to work harder!” I protested.  “And, okay, I was getting rather bored at that point.”

“Well, I am glad you both made it,” Kate said.  “Now, let me retrieve Her Majesty.  She’s probably making a nest in my closet again.”

“She does love to do that,” Hal said.

After I’d seen Hal and Queenie safely back to the hall, I spritzed on some mosquito repellant and headed towards the river.  I’d heard something about a bird sanctuary. I was tempted to cut through the grounds and take a look at the scene of the crime on my way, but because of my unfamiliarity with the area, I did the boring thing and followed the route on my map.

Finding the bird sanctuary wasn’t quite as simple as I’d anticipated, as my little tourist-brochure map left off a couple of rather relevant details, such as the fact that the roads near the river were as twisty as corkscrew macrame, presumably to avoid the swampier parts of the local topography.  I made it to the park without falling into any bogs, but the trip was not without its share of narrow escapes.  While I was navigating one series of particularly sharp switchbacks I almost ran into a family of swans crossing the road.  It was an adorable sight, though leavened with a bit of terror.  Fortunately, the parent swans were occupied with their family responsibilities and decided to let me off with a stern warning.

 The bird sanctuary’s dirt and gravel trails, while decently maintained, were more than a bit squelchy in spots, and I was very thankful I’d remembered the bug repellant, but the scenery was beautiful.  I’d reached a little floating dock and had stopped to watch the waterfowl when I was approached by a tall young woman about my own age.  She was very pretty, in a statuesque way, but seemed extremely distraught.  “You must leave!” she hissed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “Am I in your way?”

“Not the dock, you foolish girl!  Leave Mesopotamia!  You and your paramour!  Flee this place at all costs, before it’s too late!”

“Excuse me... I’m not currently dating anyone, for one.  If you’re referring to the guy I’m currently staying with, he’s seeing someone else and I don’t think I’m really his type.  And what dreadful things are going to happen here if we stick around?”

Before my mysterious new acquaintance could answer me, we both saw a tall young man carrying a camera jogging around the corner of the trail.

“Such a pity you couldn’t have arrived last month,” the mystery woman said.  “You missed the wild rhododendrons.”

“Met someone new, Ruby?” the man asked.  

“We have not yet introduced ourselves,” Ruby said, a bit more archly than was really called for.

“Well, let’s fix that!  I’m Jack Stapleton, and this is my sister Ruby.  And you are?”

“Marcella Argento.  I’m a friend of Hal Brackenwood’s, and I’ll be staying at the Hall for a while.”

Both Stapletons were tall, dark haired, and dark eyed.  Ruby had fair skin, waist length black ringlets, and looked like a refugee from a pre-Raphaelite painting.  Jack was a sturdily built, rather hirsute gentleman with impressively sharp teeth, a Bruce Campbell chin and a complexion that suggested he spent a great deal of time outdoors.  He had shoulder-length hair he tied back and wore old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses - the combined effect made me think of a very manly 18th century natural philosopher with possible therianthropic ancestry.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jack.  “ Am I talking to the Marcella Argento, the famous true crime blogger?”

I rolled my eyes.  “No, I’m the one who has what could charitably be described as a ‘cult following.’”

“Have you and Viviane decided to branch out into paranormal investigation?” Jack asked.  His tone was relaxed and genial, but something about his body language just seemed off.  Ruby was quietly nervous.

“You’re referring to the whole Sasquatch/vengeful forest spirit business, right?”

“Well, yes,” Jack continued.  “It’s the closest thing to a mystery we have in this quiet little town.”

“Do you have any theories?” I asked.

“I don’t like to propose explanations without data,” he said, “and there’s precious little of that.  Most of the so-called research in the field ranges from well-intentioned wishful thinking to outright fraud.”  Ruby rolled her eyes, and the two siblings exchanged a very odd look.  What was up with these people?

“Have you lived around here for long?” I asked.

“Only for the past two years,” Jack said.  “I got a job up at the national park.  I’m a botanist, although I do dabble in the other natural sciences, and I’ve always been interested in the ecosystems of the Olympics.”  Another inscrutable look from Ruby.

“That sounds really interesting,” I said.  

“It is,” said Jack.  He turned his head a little and looked intently at something off in the distance.  I wondered what he saw that was so interesting.  “I do believe that’s a Dance Fly swarm.  They’ve been oddly scarce this season.  Goodbye!”  Jack dashed off down the trail towards the bobbing cloud of insects.  It seemed that entomology took priority over small talk.

Ruby watched her brother until he seemed safely out of earshot, then turned to me.  “Miss Argento, I must implore you - pay no heed to my earlier exhortations.  If you know what is good for both of us, pray, strike them from your memory,” she stage-whispered.

“Excuse me?” I said softly.  “You seemed perfectly serious at the time.  Has something changed in the past five minutes?”

“Only that your connection to the young Mr. Brackenwood is not what I believed it to be,” she continued.  “If your fortunes are not permanently linked with the House of Brackenwood and your stay here will be brief, you have no reason to worry if you exert ordinary caution and do not meddle in things beyond your ken.”

“Look, Ms. Stapleton,” I said.  Something about her manner made it hard to call her by her first name, “If you really want to help, could you tone down the Gothic Oracle act for a while and be a little more, you know, specific and concrete?  Do you believe that there’s something to the whole ‘Curse of the Brackenwoods’ business?”

Ruby shook her head with a dramatic flair that showed off her tumbling curls to excellent advantage.  I briefly wondered if she’d had acting lessons.  “I merely meant,” she continued, “That it was foolhardy for him to deliberately settle in the place that had seen so many members of his family come to horrible ends.  Please, Miss Argento, do not expect me to explain further.  And say nothing of this to my brother.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Goodbye, um, take care of yourself.”  Ruby bade me farewell with an imperious little wave and went back to watching the ducks.  I continued along down the trail, but deliberately headed away from where Jack had gone.  I’d had enough weird conversations for the present.


	6. At The Hall

To: [whack_a_6022@lovelacescape.net](mailto:whack_a_6022@lovelacescape.net)

From: [lapucelle1983@hotmail.com](mailto:lapucelle1983@hotmail.com)

Subject: Progress Report 1

Viviane -

    Greetings from the primeval jungle!  Hal and I arrived safely, and you will be pleased to learn that Queenie and Hal have been reunited to the satisfaction of both parties.  The scenery here is beautiful, and the weather is pleasant enough if you don’t mind mist, but the humidity is doing interesting things to my hair.  I feel like Pam Grier in Coffy.

    The house is everything the photos promised and then some.  Definitely one of the Stately Homes of Washington.  However, I regret to say that I haven’t found the secret passage or revolving bookcase yet.  Most of my time’s been spent out exploring the neighborhood.  I haven’t seen any outstandingly interesting invertebrates yet, but apparently there are Dance Flies in the region, if those are of interest.

    In terms of suspects: plenty of people acting suspicious in general (or at least mysterious and evasive), but nobody who seems to have had it in for the late Mr. Brackenwood.  I would recommend the Pickfords (Marcus and Antonia, married couple, late-thirties/forties) and the Stapletons (Jack and Ruby, siblings, about our age) as potential subjects of investigation.  At least I know that the Pickfords are hiding something, and the Stapletons are just odd.  Ruby especially.  Not “eccentric” odd, “deliver mysterious warning while under the impression that I’m dating Hal and then take it back and ask me to mention it to no one” odd.  It’d be kind of a hoot if I could be sure that Hal was not, in fact, in any danger.

    This is terribly unscientific of me, but something about this place makes me want to believe, on a gut level, that the late Mr. Brackenwood’s demise was not entirely accidental.  Even apart from all the suspicious people, Mesopotamia just strikes me as the kind of quaint little place where unlucky people occasionally get done in by elaborate plots, which are then solved by busy-body little old ladies.  (See, I told you it was unscientific.)  Could be worse, however - at least with all the cryptozoologists coming and going, the place isn’t isolated enough to be a Cannibal Cult Village.  (Sorry!)

    Do remember to take care of yourself.  You know that even your work starts to slip if you sleep less than six hours out of every forty-eight.

I remain, as ever,

Yours,

Marcé

 

* * *

    After the encounter with the mysterious Stapleton siblings, my mind was too preoccupied with human concerns to give the natural beauty around me quite the focus it deserved, but I still enjoyed my walk around the bird sanctuary.  Whatever Ruby Stapleton wanted, I thought that I should probably tell Hal about Ruby’s odd attempt to warn me off.  It didn’t seem right to leave him out of the loop about something that was, in some ways, more his business than mine.  

    My journey back to Brackenwood Hall was much less eventful than my walk to the bird sanctuary, without any awkward encounters with potentially irritable swans or stray Gothic heroines.  The most dramatic thing that happened to me was being dive-bombed by an oversized dragonfly, and when you visit the modern world’s best approximation of the Carboniferous era, you have to expect that sort of thing.

    Since I’d allowed for distractions that did not materialize, I made it back to the Hall in plenty of time for dinner.  The Brackenwood dining room was a big dark, manorial-looking room with a big dark dining table that really would have looked less incongruous with a damask tablecloth, lots of candles and wine glasses and unnecessary silverware, and at least eight more people in evening wear.  Dinner consisted of baked salmon, fried potatoes, snap peas, and strawberry shortcake, served with some white wine I didn’t recognize.  It was all delicious, but the atmosphere made things a little awkward.

“It feels like we should be serenaded by a minstrel’s gallery or something,” Hal said.  “Or at least a string quartet.”

“We could bring in a stereo,” I replied.  “It’s not like we don’t have the space.  We could play some ABBA or something and lighten the mood a bit.”

“I don’t know...” Hal said.  “ABBA’s awfully frivolous.  What if Pickford decides that it merits his butlerly disapproval?”

“Okay, good point,” I said.  “Maybe something cheery but a little more formal for the dining room.  Do you like Rossini?  We can have ABBA with the brandy in the library.”

“That reminds me,” Hal said.  “I’ll need to show you the library after dinner.  It’s amazing.”

During dinner, with the possibility that one of the Pickfords might pop in at any moment on some servantly errand, it was hard to talk about anything too personal.  The atmosphere relaxed a bit after we made our way to the library with a pot of coffee and a bottle of brandy.

Clearly, when it had been constructed, the library had been built as some Platonic ideal of the Victorian men’s club - it smelled of polished wood, leather chairs, old books, and the ghost of ancient cigar smoke.  In the intervening decades, it had been furnished with every odd chair that was out of style or getting too scruffy looking for the more public rooms of the house, but was too outrageously comfortable to get rid of, and an equally motley selection of lamps.  And the books!  There were enough shelves to hold the collection of a small branch library - they held everything from the complete works of Charles Dickens in hardcover to a full set of the Time-Life _Foods of the World_ cookbooks to an entire row of Isaac Asimov paperbacks.  “Wow,” I said.  “This is a proper library.”

“You haven’t even seen the best part yet,” Hal said, practically bouncing on his toes with excitement.  He put his coffee down on one of the little tables and dashed over to a bookcase on one of the far walls that was filled mostly with reference works.  He pulled out _Survey of the North American Timber Industry_ , reached back into the shelf, pulled something, and the bookcase turned on some hidden axis to reveal a hidden room.

“Okay,” I said.  “I’m impressed.”

The hidden room had a similar setup to the main library, on a smaller scale.  The biggest difference seemed to be the contents: some hilarious-looking Victorian pornography, copies of _The Communist Manifesto_ and _Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health_ , several rows of trashy romance novels, a varied sampling of pseudo-scientific and conspiracy theory literature, a stack of mid twentieth century men’s magazines, and several file cabinets filled with unbound documents.  “Looks like you found your family’s Bluebeard room,” I said.  Hal was ignoring the literature on display and was happily flipping through one of the file drawers.

“There’s all kinds of good stuff in here,” Hal said.  “Court records - damn, I wonder how old Hugo managed to wriggle his way out of that - personal letters, a photo of my great-great uncle Roger in drag, more letters, hey - what’s this? ‘Indian Legends of the Wild Men of the Forest’ by Myrtle Brackenwood?  How old is this?”

“You think Kate might know?” I asked.  “She seems to be most in touch with the local cryptozoologists and such.”

“Maybe,” Hal said.  “But I doubt it.  If this was common knowledge, why’s it hidden?”

“Maybe one of Myrtle’s descendents thought it was undignified,” I suggested.  “Or maybe Myrtle couldn’t spell.”

“You said you were going into town in the morning, right?” Hal asked.

“Yes, if the weather cooperates.”

“If it’s convenient, could you drop in at the historical society and see if they have a copy of this?”

“Of course,” I said.

The weather turned drizzly after dinner, so Hal and I made popcorn and spent the evening indoors watching Charles Brackenwood’s collection of old sci-fi movies.  

I normally sleep well in the country, particularly when I’ve been very active, but something that night woke me up at a little after two in the morning.  It was the sound of a car pulling up, very close by, and a door slamming.  In the city I wouldn’t have noticed it, but at that hour of the night along an isolated stretch of country road, it stood out.  I went to my window to investigate, but there were no strange cars or people on the piece of road visible to me.  Of course, the ubiquitous giant trees obstructed some of the view.

Morning dawned bright and fresh and dewy - emphasis on the dewy - and I came down to breakfast with a light heart.  

“Coming down to breakfast” turned out to be a bit more involved than I’d anticipated.  After carefully navigating to the formal dining hall, I made it there with a certain sense of internal triumph only to discover that the place was entirely unoccupied.  Fortunately, after a few minutes of exploration on the ground floor, I ran into Pickford, who was courteous enough to steer me to the breakfast room, where Hal was already amiably munching his toast and reading the local paper.

“‘Morning, Hal,” I said.  “Say, this place is cute.”  I helped myself to some scrambled eggs and muesli from the sideboard.  “I was worried I’d have to eat my cereal in the dark.  Any news about our friend the bank robber?”

“Still haven’t caught him,” Hal said.  “He was last seen heading for the hills, and he hasn’t been seen in any of the towns around here.  They think he’s probably going to hole up in an abandoned cabin or lodge and lay low for a while.”

“Not an entirely bad plan,” I said, “but what’s he going to do for food?  Okay, it’s salmon season, but he’s a bank robber from the city.  Does he even know how to fish?”

“Maybe he’s planning on breaking into some survivalist’s bomb shelter and stealing the canned goods,” Hal suggested.  At this point, Mrs. Pickford came in to refill the coffee pot.  She still smelled anxious, and she looked like she hadn’t slept well last night.  

“Maybe he has someone helping him out,” I said.  “He’s a bank robber, maybe he had some cash hidden away and can hire someone to run errands.”  Mrs. Pickford was still outwardly the picture of the perfect domestic professional, but I noticed her hand shake as she picked up the coffee pot.  I hoped she wasn’t ill.

“Funny,” I said.  “How you notice noise more in the country.  In Seattle, I slept through traffic all the time, but out here, one slamming car door at two a.m.’s enough to wake me up.  I guess it’s all a matter of context.”

“It was nothing,” Mrs. Pickford said.  “Probably just someone coming back late after spending the evening in Port Angeles.  Don’t trouble yourself about it.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” I said.  Okay, what was up with the woman?

It appeared that Mrs. Pickford really was not feeling well, because after she refilled the coffee and milk she ducked out of the breakfast room and didn’t come back.  This was fine with me.

“Have you met the Stapletons yet?” I asked.

“I’ve heard of them, haven’t met them yet,” Hal said.  “Kate told me a little about them.  Siblings, right?  They’ve lived in town for a few years.  Brother works up at the park, sister’s involved in a lot of local historical preservation stuff.”

“Yeah, them.  Did she mention that they’re both rather attractive and extremely eccentric?”

“No, she did not,” Hal said.  “Although I’m not sure what Kate’s eccentricity threshold is.”

“Good point,” I said.  “Well, they are.”  I didn’t hear anyone moving in the nearby rooms, but I dropped my voice’s volume a few notches to be on the safe side.  “Okay, talking with him one on one, Jack’s only a bit nerdy, but combined with his sister- something is up with those two.  And his sister seems to think that we’re all characters in a Gothic novel.”

“Maybe we are,” Hal said.  “Look at this place.”

“Point taken,” I said.  “But Ruby wasn’t just having a little fun with the ambience.  Unless this dolorous damsel has a very odd sense of humor, she was completely serious about her mysterious warning of impending doom.”

“Great, another one.  Was hers at least specific?  You know, something potentially useful, like ‘the 1990s vintage bottles of mead in the wine cellar have all been contaminated with botulism’ or ‘the third floor guest bathroom is haunted by a hostile poltergeist?’”  

“No,” I said.  “No, it was not.  I don’t think that sort of thing is allowed.  If you go around telling people things like ‘remember to check the walls for hidden corpses’ and ‘make sure the parsley you’re eating is actually parsley and not poison hemlock’ they take away your mysterious warning card.”

“Well, what did she say?”  
    “‘Flee before it’s too late,’ that kind of thing.  She wouldn’t give details.  She also seemed to think we were dating, but I managed to clear that up.”

“Thanks,” Hal said.  Queenie had wandered into the breakfast room and sidled up to her human’s chair.  Hal leaned down to give her an affectionate scratch behind the ears.  Queenie paused for a bit to bask in the attention, then ambled up to my chair.  She stared at me expectantly.  I got the hint and put down my empty cereal bowl.

Hal looked toward me with a rather odd expression.  “Oh, is Queenie allergic to milk or something?” I asked.  “Sorry, I should have asked first.”

“It’s fine,” Hal assured me.  “Queenie has an iron digestive system.  I’ve seen her eat everything from mixed green salad to geoducks.”  He glanced toward the door, then leaned closer to me and whispered, “Is it just me, or does Mrs. Pickford seem jumpy this morning?”

“It’s not just you,” I replied.  “That woman’s hiding something.  She even smells nervous.  Sort of thin and chlorine-greenish and prickly.”

“This is a werewolf thing, isn’t it?”

“Being able to smell emotions, or synesthesia?”

“Both, I guess.  Never mind,” Hal whispered.  “You have any idea what’s up with her?”

“Nothing yet.  I don’t even know if it’s the same thing that was bothering Ruby Stapleton.”

“Okay.  Keep me in the loop, eh?” He then poured himself a cup of coffee and said, at normal conversational volume, “Have you had a chance to go into town yet?  I’ve heard it’s quite colorful.”

“I’ve only been to Kate’s and the bird sanctuary,” I said.  “Haven’t even run into a single cryptozoologist.”

“Why not go exploring today?” Hal suggested.  “I’m going down to the historical society to see if anyone there is interested in some of the old family documents, and then I have a meeting with the lawyers.  Nothing I should need backup for.”

“Well, then, you’re braver than I am,” I said.  “Werewolf thugs and telekinetic temper tantrums I can handle, but Lord deliver me from legal paperwork.”

“Why do you think I’m trying to get it all out of the way?” Hal said.  “Have fun, and tell me if you find out anything interesting.”

“Will do.  You have my phone number, right?” Hal nodded, and I stacked up my dishes, gave Queenie a parting scratch behind the ears, and left to get ready.


	7. In Town

It wasn’t terribly hot, but by the end of my ten-minute ride into town, I was dripping, and if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I’m sure that my hair would have become a curly brown mushroom cloud.  The air had a particular soft, damp, evergreen-scented heaviness to it that was odd but pleasant at first, like an exotic spa treatment.  By the end of my ride, however, I felt as if a health-conscious cannibalistic giant had captured me and was steaming me alive very slowly to preserve my vitamin content.

Despite the moist air, I was getting rather thirsty, so I parked my scooter at the first coffee house I ran into.  Banana Slug Bakery & Espresso was a plank building that looked rather like a tiny longhouse, except that instead of a totem pole out front, there were some little wooden tables and benches and a chainsaw sculpture of a giant slug with a coffee mug.  A few of the tables were occupied by one or two people enjoying a spot of late breakfast, but most of the action was clustered around one table in the middle of the courtyard.  I pulled off my helmet and went to investigate.

The center of interest turned out to be a young man with long dark hair, accompanied by a very large crow who seemed surprisingly nonchalant about being so close to so many humans.  Oh, wait, that wasn’t a crow, it was a raven.  The young man laid down a sheet of newspaper and covered it with dry cereal, the bird walked around the perimeter of the table in a solemn and almost meditative fashion, then the bird suddenly lunged for a piece of cereal and the man read the text the food had been covering to the onlookers.  Then the process continued.  It became clear that the bird was picking stocks.

Eventually the raven became either full or bored and hopped off the table, and the crowd dispersed.  The man put away his newspaper and raven treats and walked inside.  I followed him.  The cafe smelled like coffee and baked goods with faint undertones of evergreen and citrus cleanser.  It had Douglas Fir plank walls and formica furniture, and was decorated with an eclectic collection of artwork by local artists.  There was a bit of a line inside, so I had time to attempt to make conversation.

“Hello,” I said.  “If you don’t mind me asking - is that business with your bird a regular thing?”

“Once a week,” he said.  “We even get some people from out of town.  We got a professional skeptic from Port Angeles once, although I’m not sure what he was trying to debunk, exactly.  I never claimed Edgar was a particularly good financial adviser.”

“Some people seem to trust his judgement,” I said.

“People are disillusioned with financial professionals nowadays and they’re looking for something different,” he said.  “And Edgar’s made more good guesses than spectacularly bad ones.  I’m Lucas Jacobs, by the way.  And you are?”

“Marcella Argento,” I said.  

“You’re new in town, I take it?”

“Visiting, actually.  I’m staying down at Brackenwood Hall.”

“Friend of the family?” Lucas asked.

“Well, I’m friends with Hal.  I don’t know anyone else in the family,” I said.

“That’s funny,” Lucas said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t sound a bit Canadian.”

“Probably because I’m not,” I admitted.  “I live in Seattle.”

Lucas regarded me with an odd, searching look, but didn’t press the point.  “How do you like it here?”

“It’s very picturesque,” I said, “In a Paleozoic sort of way.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Lucas asked playfully.

“Good, of course!” I said.  “What, do you think I’m some kind of eonist?”

“No, just wanted to be sure,” he said.  “If you want the full Paleozoic experience, they have a couple of giant salamanders living at the interpretive center.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said.  “I’ve got a friend who loves herps.  Now, speaking of vertebrates - you seem like a well-connected guy.  Anything I should know about the people around here?  You know, what local attractions I should check out, who I should be really careful not to provoke, that kind of thing?”

Lucas ordered a salal-berry muffin and a cappuccino, and a bag of crusts for Edgar.  This was apparently a routine request, since the server had a baggie of bread crusts and bits of burnt cookie ready behind the counter.  I was still caffeinated from breakfast, so I got an iced rooibos chai and a Nanaimo bar.  The cafe’s small dining area was a bit crowded, so we headed outside to eat and talk.

“I wouldn’t say there’s anyone around here you particularly need to watch out for,” Lucas said, after we had settled down at one of the outdoor tables.  “At least, not when it comes to personal safety.  We don’t have any real ideological extremists in the conventional sense, but this town is crawling with Single Issue Wonks.  The people here are pretty live and let live with regards to things like religion, sexuality, or who you voted for in the past election - don’t get me wrong - but you walk into Roy’s for a beer and you have a good chance of getting an earful of why Washington’s distillery laws are crippling the economy.  And we have our eccentrics, of course.”

“Yeah, Kate Morrissey told me about the cryptozoologists,” I said.

“I wasn’t really thinking of them, actually,” Lucas said.  “Okay, I realize that that the Sasquatch hunters are pretty quirky by most standards, but most of them only bring out their real weirdness with each other.  I’m the handler for a bird who gives financial advice.  Who am I to judge them for having unconventional interests?”

“So, if the people coming in to look for giant ninja bear-ape-folks are reasonably normal by your standards, who counts as unusual?” I asked.

“Most of them don’t live in town proper, but there are a lot of people living off-the-grid in the area - hippie homesteaders, survivalists, people like that.  We’ve got a broad spectrum - some of them are as down to earth as anyone gets around here, many of them are a bit wacky but basically amiable, and a substantial minority are unapologetic cranks,” Lucas explained.

“But not the militant far-right kind?”

“If any of them are, they’re good at keeping the fact to themselves.  They’re more just-” Lucas was sitting across from me, and I saw his eyes widen for a moment as he noticed someone coming up behind me. “Upstanding members of society.  Hello, Mr. Frankland.”

Mr. Frankland was a short, wiry white man of about seventy.  He was dapper in the manner of someone who hadn’t updated his wardrobe or haircut since before the turn of the millennium, and he smelled of pipe tobacco and Aqua Velva.  His thick horn-rimmed glasses and slightly oversized front teeth would, ordinarily, have given him the aura of a harmless old nerd.  But he was vibrating with irate energy that set his Fu Manchu mustache aquiver.

“Mr. Jacobs,” he said.  “I am a law-abiding citizen and have no objection to doing my part, but enough is enough!”

“No doubt,” Lucas said, unphased.

“A man has a right to defend himself in his own home, does he not?”

“Indeed,” Lucas said.

“And law enforcement is supposed to make the lives of law-abiding citizens more secure, not less, is that right?”

“I believe that is the conventional understanding, yes,” said Lucas.

“Then why-” Mr. Frankland paused, dramatically, and caught his breath, “Why, may I ask, is the Clallam County sheriff’s department infringing on my right to keep myself and my granddaughter secure on my own property at this time?”

“Another hiker get caught?” Lucas asked.

“No, I haven’t had any trouble with them since I cleared the north path and put up more signs.  But the sheriff insisted that some of my perfectly reasonable home security measures were posing ‘safety hazards’ and interfering with their search efforts.  Never mind that having an escaped convict in the area would make any sensible people want to be more careful.  Goddamn Democrats.”

“Mr. Frankland,” Lucas said, “with all due respect, you had to deal with this during the last administration too, remember?”

“Fine, then.  Goddamn government meddlers.  Jade and I came into town for a little unscheduled supply run.  Never hurts to be prepared when there are dangerous elements afoot.”

Lucas laughed and shook his head.  “Mr. Frankland, this is one guy, not a mob war.  I’m sure you can handle him with what you keep on hand.”

“You may be right, but you know what they say.  Better to have it and not need it…” Mr. Frankland said.  He looked toward the door of the cafe, lowered his voice, and continued, “And Jade needed a change of scenery.  I’ve been making her stick closer to home until the convict’s caught, and just between you and me, I think the girl’s getting a bit of cabin fever.”

“Mr. Frankland,” I said.  “This escaped prisoner you’re talking about - he’s the bank robber who escaped from Clallam Bay a few days ago, right?  Do they have any leads?”

“I hope so,” he replied.  “Unless the sheriff’s department really has nothing better to do with their time and our tax dollars than comb through the backyards of randomly selected residents in hope that they’ll trip over a clue.”  For a moment he sounded so much like Viviane in one of her “I’m surrounded by incompetents” moments that I had to smile.

    At this point, a young girl holding a tray of drinks and baked goods walked out of the cafe and headed toward our table.  She was Eurasian, in her early teens, and rather small for her age.  When she caught sight of Edgar, her face lit up, and she jogged toward the table as fast as she could without risking spilling the drinks.  “Edgar!” She set down her tray, broke off a bit of snickerdoodle, and offered it to him.  Edgar accepted the treat with gravitas, ate a tiny corner of it, and amused himself bashing the rest against the table and playing with the crumbs.  “Not hungry, huh?” she said, amused.  “Oh, hello, Lucas,” she said.  “How are things?”

    “Not bad, Jade,” Lucas said.  “Your grandpa was just telling Marcella and me about the troubles you guys have been having with the sheriff’s department.”

    “Oh, that,” Jade said.  “I still think they’re barking up the wrong tree.  That person I saw was not an escaped bank robber.”

    “Why do you think so?” I asked.

    “No leafy crud.  Nature around here is sticky.  No way someone who’d been fleeing cross country for days and hiding out in the woods would be walking around without fir needles and bits of twig and burrs and stuff all over their clothes.  And the bank robber’s supposed to be a little taller than Grandpa.  This person was a lot taller and skinnier.”

    “Did you get a good look?” I asked.

    “Not at their face,” Jade said.  “It was pretty late - close to sunset - so I was surprised to see a hiker on that stretch of trail.  It’s not a very popular spot anyway.  It’s pretty, but hard to get to from the main roads and the ground’s kind of squashy.   Scientists and ‘local artisans’ like it.  But I don’t think they were a moonshiner.  They had one of those trail maps the interpretive center at the campground hands out, and nobody with any sense’d hide their still in territory they didn’t know well.  And I was standing downwind and didn’t smell alcohol or mash on them.”  

    Okay, I thought, If Viviane and I ever need a plucky kid sidekick, we know who to ask.

    Mr. Frankland took a sip of his drink, shook his head, and glared at his cup.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with people nowadays,” he said, “But for some reason, nobody in twenty-first century America can make iced coffee like we got in Saigon.”

    Jade rolled her eyes.  “I told you, Grandpa, it’s because the milk’s different.”

    “Excuses, excuses,” he grumbled.  But despite his dissatisfaction, he kept drinking the coffee, alternating the sips with bites of biscotti.  He did not dunk.  I also noticed that he and Jade both nibbled off small chunks of cookie with their front teeth rather than crunching with their molars.   _All right, then,_ I thought, _Are you guys the wererat survivalists Kate was talking about?  And are there any more of you around here?_  Wererats aren’t known for being solitary people, but then, Mr. Frankland was an eccentric.  Maybe he had a whole big noisy clan of wererat relatives somewhere and had come to the forest for a little space.

    “You’ve been to Vietnam, Mr. Frankland?” I said.  “That must have been really interesting.  If you don’t mind me asking, what were you doing over there?”

    “I was an Army engineer during the war,” he said.  “One of the Tunnel Rats.  Have you heard of them?”

    That’s oddly appropriate, I thought.  I nodded.

“Job taught me more than I ever wanted to know about subterranean fortifications,” Mr. Frankland continued, “Not that it hasn’t come in handy since then.”  

“Have you done much underground construction yourself, then?” I asked.

“Some,” he said.  “Up at the homestead, we’ve got the bomb shelter, and the fruit cellar, and the emergency tunnels - nothing fancy.  Back in the late eighties I helped old Ulysses Brackenwood with designs for some excavations on his own property, but he insisted on changing all the plans himself at the last minute and brought in a work crew that didn’t speak English.  Paranoid old coot.”  I noticed Lucas and Jade doing their best not to laugh.  

“Was he building a bomb shelter or the tomb of a dead emperor?” I asked.

“He claimed he wanted to expand the wine cellar and build an emergency bunker,” Mr. Frankland said darkly.  “God only knows what he was really up to.”

“I still say he was looking for buried treasure,” Jade said.  “Or maybe he already had the loot and needed to make a better hiding place for it.  But there’s buried treasure involved somewhere.”

“I’m staying up at the Hall right now,” I said.  “Should I be keeping an eye out for sinkholes?”

“Just be careful,” Mr. Frankland said, in a sombre tone I hadn’t heard from him before.  “That house and that family attract all kinds of strange trouble, and I’m not talking about angry forest spirits.  You and the young man had best keep your eyes open.”

 

* * *

 

To: [whack_a_6022@lovelacescape.net](mailto:whack_a_6022@lovelacescape.net)

From: [lapucelle1983@hotmail.com](mailto:lapucelle1983@hotmail.com)

Subject: Progress Report 2

Viviane-

Greetings from the house of mystery!  I have discovered many interesting things about the Brackenwoods and their milieu, although I’m not sure at this point how much of this is strictly relevant to our investigation.

Brackenwood Hall turns out to be even more gloriously Gothic than we initially thought.  The place contains at least one bona-fide secret room!  (It’s filled with old family documents and embarrassing literature rather than skeletons and stolen jewels or anything like that, but still - Secret Room!  Behind a bookcase!)  The Pickfords are still being evasive and nervous.

The townspeople are very friendly.  Well, I’m not entirely certain friendly is the word in all cases, but even the curmudgeonly old survivalists don’t mind sitting down for a while and sharing local gossip with strangers.  Convenient as this is, it does dispel a bit of the Town With A Dark Secret mystique around the place.

One curmudgeon in particular has been potentially very helpful.  In the course of one conversation, I learned that:

  * The authorities suspect that the bank robber who escaped from Clallam Bay has gone to ground somewhere near here, but if so, he’s making himself exceedingly inconspicuous.

  * Mr. Ulysses Brackenwood (the heir before Charles) had some Super Secret excavations done on the property in the late 1980s.

  * There is a stretch of trail near the campground that’s infrequently traveled, not easily accessible from the main roads, and popular with naturalists and Suspicious Characters.

  * There are at least two wererats living in the area.




    He also gave me yet another distressingly unspecific mysterious warning.  Perhaps I should start a collection.

    With regard to your other interests - how do you feel about giant salamanders?

    I hope that your current mysterious project is progressing well, whatever it is.  And please, remember to take care of yourself.

    I remain, as ever,

    Yours,

    Marcé


	8. Dark Clouds and Dire Warnings

    That night passed uneventfully - at least, any mysterious nocturnal expeditions had the courtesy to be quiet.  I navigated my way down to breakfast and found Hal and Queenie in the foyer, surrounded by cardboard boxes.

    “‘Morning, Marcé!” he called.  “My things finally arrived, as you can see.”

    “So that’s what this all is,” I said.  “You’ve decided you want to stay here, then?”

    “I was planning to,” Hal said.  “I haven’t made the final decision yet, but I do like it here.  And I can’t live out of a couple of suitcases indefinitely.”

    “And you’d rather pay to have this stuff shipped down from Moose Tracks, BC than have to go shopping again?” I asked.

    “Right.  Why buy something twice and have to go to the trouble of breaking it in again?” Hal said.  “And I’m from Fraser Creek.  Moose Tracks is about an hour’s drive to the northeast.”

    “Still planning on having Kurt come down to visit?” I asked.

    “In September,” Hal said.  “He’ll be studying polar bears in Nunavut through August.  Which may be just as well.  I miss him, but I’m not certain he could handle the rigors of American summers.”

    I laughed.  “So is Kurt an animate snowman?”  Hal looked puzzled.  “Hal, you realize, you are currently smack in the middle of one of the mildest climates in the continental U.S.?”

    Hal put his hand to his heart.  “My god, how do Americans ever get anything done in the summer?”

    “Well, sometimes we don’t,” I admitted.  “And most other parts of the country use air conditioning.”

    Queenie began rubbing against Hal’s ankles and looked up at him accusingly.  “All right, all right,” Hal said.  “Have patience.”  Hal fished a small box out from the pile, opened it with a pocket knife that looked overqualified for the job, and took out a small stuffed soccer ball.  Queenie kept glaring, but her focus changed from Hal to the ball in his hand.  Hal lobbed the ball across the floor, and Queenie began a mad dash after it.

    “Want any help unpacking?” I asked.

    “I may,” Hal said.  “I can certainly do this by myself if you have other things you need to do, but it would go faster.  But I was thinking of doing most of this after breakfast.”

* * *

    “Mrs. Pickford,” Hal said, “Those strawberry pancakes were delicious.”

    “Thank you sir,” Mrs. Pickford said.  She picked up the empty serving plate and began to walk out of the breakfast room.

    “Oh, and by the way,” Hal continued.  Mrs. Pickford froze in place.  “I just had my things shipped in from Canada, and I don’t think I’ll need as much cold weather gear living here as I did up in Fraser Creek.  Some of it’s still in very good condition.  Do you know if there’s anyone local who can use it?”  She relaxed slightly.  

    “There is a thrift shop in town that accepts donations,” Mrs. Pickford said.  She paused for a moment.  “Set aside what you do not want for yourself and I would be happy to drop it off for you.  Sir.  No doubt someone will be able to use it.  It gets cold up in the foothills, sir.”  When Hal didn’t say anything more after a moment’s pause, Mrs. Pickford picked up the empty serving dishes and left the breakfast room at a brisk pace.

    Mrs. Pickford appeared better rested than she had yesterday, but she still smelled anxious.  I wondered how her mysterious problem was progressing.

    After breakfast, the omnipresent mist developed into proper rain, and Hal and I spent the next few hours indoors unpacking and playing with Queenie.  Mrs. Pickford spent the time dropping off Hal’s surplus winter clothes and running other errands.  She explained that she preferred to shop on Farmers Market day to get the best produce, but I wondered if she wanted to get out of the house for a while and away from whatever was making her so nervous.

* * *

    Mrs. Pickford’s errands were of such an urgent nature that she’d left before lunch, and Hal and I had to serve ourselves.  Pickford was down in the wine cellar rotating the claret  or doing something equally butlery.  Hal and I used this as a golden opportunity to gossip.

“Is it just me, or did Mrs. P still seem on edge this morning?” I asked.

“A little, yes,” Hal said.  “Tense.  And why duck out so early?  I don’t begrudge it, if she wants to have the afternoon off, but ducking out right before lunch doesn’t seem like her.”

“I agree,” I said.  “She and Pickford are both such old-school consummate professionals.  Why make the master of the house reheat his own soup if it’s not an emergency?”

“Maybe she had to rush to get to the Farmers Market in time?” Hal suggested.  “But these things are the same time every week, aren’t they?  Wouldn’t she know ahead of time and just plan to have lunch earlier today?”

“Something’s up,” I said.

“Undoubtedly,” Hal said.  “Now, does she smell guilty-nervous to you, or just nervous?”

“Guilt doesn’t have much of a bouquet of its own, I’m afraid,” I said.  “If it did, some of my cases with Viv would’ve been much simpler.  But I do think she’s acting like someone afraid of being found out.”

“Marcella, you thought that missionary I met on the ferry was acting suspicious,” Hal pointed out.  “But I do think you’re on to something here.”

A thought hit me.  “Hal, you’ve spent more time here than I have.  How does she act around you when I’m not around?”

“Hmm… polite, formal, maybe a bit tense but not jumpy.  We’ve talked a bit.  She seems at ease enough talking about the town and the history of the house, but she’s very good at deflecting any remotely personal questions.  Those make her nervous.  Why’d you want to know?”

“Well,” I said, “Okay, so I’m a mezzaluna, right?  And I’m not that wolfy looking, but a few people have managed to clock me before I told them myself.  So I wanted to know if Mrs. Pickford was more nervous around me than she is in general.”

“I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought of that,” Hal said.  “Does long-term anxiety smell different from short-term fear?”

“It does,” I said.  “And she smells anxious.  I just wanted to know if her reaction to me might be skewing the evidence.”

“Wait -” Hal said.  “You’re a detective.  Even if you did make her especially nervous, it wouldn’t necessarily mean she’s a - what is it?  Lycanthrophobe?”

“Morphicist, technically.”

“It could mean that she’s up to something and afraid you’ll find out about it.”

“That would make sense,” I said.  “But what?  How much trouble can she get into in a place like this?  If she’d secretly sold off the family silver after your uncle died, or something like that, she’d have no reason to be particularly jumpy about personal questions.  Maybe she’s worried about something from her past catching up with her.  Maybe she’s being blackmailed!” I said.

“Or maybe she knows more about my uncle’s death than she claimed,” Hal said darkly.

“That could be it,” I admitted.  “Our problem at present is lack of data.  I mean, for all we know, she and her husband could be retired deep-cover Russian spies from the Cold War era.  It just seems pointless to concoct any hypotheses until we have a bit more of some kind of evidence.”

“Oh, great,” Hal said.  “Here this woman is up to God-only-knows-what shady business and I’ve been letting her cook my food all this time.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said.  “Charles didn’t die of poisoning, remember, and everything she’s served us has smelled fine to me.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Hal said ruefully.  “My mysterious housekeeper is Probably Not A Poisoner. God, how is this my life?”

“Serves you right for moving to the American equivalent of one of those quirky little villages in British mystery novels.”

“Your sympathy is, as always, appreciated,” Hal said dryly.

“What about Pickford?” I asked.  “Have you had any chance to properly talk to him?  I’ve barely interacted with the man.”

“Pickford is very... professional.  Very task-oriented.  Not that he’s callous or rude, he just… doesn’t bring a personal dimension into things unless he has to.  I’ve tried drawing him out, and he will answer personal questions, but he’s very clipped and factual about it.  As little elaboration as possible.  But he will get talkative about a few subjects that don’t involve him personally, with sufficient encouragement.  The man has strong feelings about antique furniture restoration.”

“But he didn’t seem nervous or on edge about anything?” I asked.

“Not unless not wanting to talk about himself counts.  He could be trying to avoid bringing up some great past sorrow or disgrace, or he could just hate small talk.  But he hasn’t been nervous or jumpy.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So - either Mrs. Pickford’s secret problem is of less concern to her husband, or modern comedy lost a great straight man when Pickford decided to become a butler.  Or, I guess, he could be a cold-blooded sociopath, but sociopaths tend not to become old family retainers.”  

Hal paused to contemplate this and poured himself another cup of tea.  “Does it get weird, Marcella-” he asked, “-thinking of the people around you as Schrodinger’s Felons?  Does the constant ‘this person seems perfectly nice but they might be up to something highly illegal’ ever get, um, cognitively-dissonant?”

“A bit, I guess.  But then, we get used to it.”

* * *

Hal and I had an unexpected visitor that afternoon: Ruby Stapleton, wearing, of all things, a black calf-length hooded cloak to keep the rain off.  Ruby was looking artistically distraught, as usual.  The rain that had worked its way through her cloak can’t have been comfortable, but she managed to look more like a pre-Raphaelite Ophelia than a soaked spaniel.  Hal looked at Ruby’s damp, ominous figure on the porch, looked at me inquiringly, and I nodded.

“Hello,” Hal said.  “Please, come in and get out of the rain.  I’m afraid we have not been introduced, Miss-?”

“Stapleton.  Ruby Stapleton.”  Ruby crossed the threshold and found the coat closet without any directions from Hal.

“Pleased to meet you,” Hal said.  “This is my friend Marcella, I believe you two have already met.”  Ruby briefly glared at me, I smiled innocently and nodded.

“Well, no point standing around in the foyer all afternoon,” I said.  “Let’s go somewhere a bit warmer and then we can talk about whatever it is you came here to talk about.  Ms. Stapleton, would you like something to drink?  Tea, herbal tea, coffee?”  I briefly wondered if I should offer her a brandy and hot water to keep away the chill.  The atmosphere of the house was getting to me.

“Your offer is appreciated but unnecessary.  I will be fine as soon as I have a chance to dry off a bit,” Ruby said, then contradicted herself by shivering artistically.

“Why don’t we go down to the breakfast room?” Hal suggested.  “The tea stuff’s already there.”

“Sounds good,” I said.  “I’ll put the kettle on.  More white Darjeeling?”

“I’d appreciate that.  Ms. Stapleton?”

Ruby shrugged and nodded.  Why was she being so quiet?  Was it because it’s hard to deliver dire warnings effectively when your teeth are chattering?

We were settled down around the breakfast table and the tea was steeping before Ruby’s reticence broke.  “Mr. Brackenwood,” Ruby said without preamble, “I have come to warn you.”

“Okay,” Hal said.  “Warn me about what?”

“Do not go into the woods after dark!  I implore you!”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Hal said.  “At least, not until I know the area a lot better than I currently do.  Look, Miss, your concern is appreciated, but I’m not some dumb city slicker who only sees big trees at Christmas time.  I know basic hiking safety.”

“It is not the hazards of the terrain that concern me,” Ruby said.  “Mr. Brackenwood, you are aware that the salmon are running?”

“I was,” Hal said.  “It’s not easy to ignore, in a town like this.”

“The salmon runs don’t just attract human fishermen,” Ruby said darkly.  

“Yes, I know, they’re a big part of the overall ecosystem,” Hal said.  “I’m from the Northwest myself.  This isn’t completely unfamiliar.”

“The salmon runs are very attractive to various carnivores in the area - foxes, wolves, eagles, and even bears.”  Hal nodded.  “The prospect of access to so much food can render the animals… less cautious than they would otherwise be, in the presence of humans.”

“Okay, don’t go fishing at night, you don’t want to startle a bear.  Makes sense,” Hal said.  

A spasm of intense frustration crossed Ruby’s features.  “Just - avoid the wilderness at night altogether, I implore you!  This place is dangerous in ways you don’t know - that you cannot know!  Please, be careful.”  Now, _that_ was the Ruby I remembered.

“All right, Miss,” Hal said dubiously.  “I appreciate your concern, I really do, but if you want to be helpful you’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”  I recognized Ruby’s “how can you be so obtuse?” glare from watching Viviane deal with clueless law enforcement, but Ruby’s eyebrows were capable of conveying heights of exasperation Viviane could only dream of.

I checked on the steeping tea and poured a cup.  “Tea, anyone?”

Ruby nodded, tossing her dark curls like a woman in a shampoo commercial.  I passed her a cup of tea, poured poured cups for myself and Hal, and I asked, “Does this have anything to do with any alleged family curses, by any chance?”

“After a fashion,” Ruby said.  “But if only it were that simple!  Mr. Brackenwood, there are sinister forces afoot weaving webs of unfathomed malevolence and subtlety.  Take care you are not caught in their strands.  And Miss Argento,” Ruby said.  “Do not let your curiosity lead you astray.  This town is not nearly as harmless as it looks.”

“Well, thank you, Miss Stapleton, I certainly appreciate your desire to help me,” Hal said.  “And I’m sure Marcella and I will exercise reasonable caution, particularly at night and around wildlife.”  Ruby sighed like a frustrated teenager, but said nothing, and returned her attentions to her tea.  “Oh, by the way, Miss Stapleton,” Hal said, “When you were referring to local carnivores one might encounter at night - were you only talking about the kind who are quadrupeds all the time?  Or were you being a bit more… inclusive?”

I’ll have to give Ruby credit: it can’t be easy to turn white with shock and let your teacup slip from your nerveless fingers without splashing tea over either yourself or the tablecloth, but she managed.  “You speak too lightly of such things, Mr. Brackenwood,” Ruby hissed.  She drained the rest of her tea in one long pull, left the table with a bit more dramatic twirling than was strictly necessary, and set off briskly towards the foyer without so much as a parting whisper of impending doom.

Hal and I looked at each other.  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.  


End file.
